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Thus in the winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.
--
Sonnet XLIII: "What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why" (1923), Collected Poems", 1931

 

Edna St. Vincent Millay

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Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best.

 

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Here’s a pot with a cot in a park
In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
Lived, died and were changed into two
Bright birds that eternally flew
Through the boughs of the may, as they sang;
’T is a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.

 

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What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.

 

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Oh, the little birds sang east, and the little birds sang west.

 

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Autumn to winter, winter into spring,
Spring into summer, summer into fall, —
So rolls the changing year, and so we change;
Motion so swift, we know not that we move.

 

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